Writing in what he says may be the most volatile decade of the nuclear age (this one) Jonathan Schell, author of the must-read The Seventh Decade: The New Shape of Nuclear Danger, warns us that the threat of nuclear weapons use and proliferation has not gone away. It has just gone out of corporate-media-coverage-sight and out of the easily-distracted public mind.

Citing the still-declared U.S. first-strike policy, and the development of new generations of implementing weaponry during the Bush period - not to mention provoking proliferation in Iran, North Korea, and elsewhere and turning a blind eye to the global trafficking in nuclear weapons led by 'ally' Pakistan - Schell makes a compelling case for seeing de-nuking the world ASAP as being right up there with climate change as a prime planetary survival issue.

(Reality check: the U.S. and Russia still have their aging nuclear weapons systems - some 2000 missiles strong on both sides - targeted on each others' key cities in hair-trigger, 'launch-on-warning mode.' What's wrong with this picture?)

The threat to democracy and bio-survival posed by nuclear weapons and power technologies - two sides of one deadly coin - has been a prime focus of our work since 1982.

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